These roles haven’t been easy or painless. Sometimes they’ve been very painful indeed. But they have been worth it. My goodness, have they been worth it.
Years rolled on again, and Wendy had a daughter. This ought not to be written in ink but in a golden splash.
On the final night of the Democratic National Convention in July, my daughter introduced me to the nation. I was backstage, ready to walk onstage the instant she was done. At least, I was supposed to be ready. But I couldn’t pull myself away from the television, where her face filled the screen. Hearing her talk, I was grateful for waterproof mascara. The fact that my poised, beautiful daughter was also standing up there as Charlotte and Aidan’s mother—she had given birth to her son only five weeks earlier—made this even more special.
During a burst of applause near the end of her remarks, Jim Margolis, who was keeping his eye on the clock, yelled to me, “We’ve gotta go!” But Chelsea wasn’t done, and I didn’t want to miss any of it. Finally, Jim yelled, “Now we’ve really gotta go!” I snapped to attention, and we raced down the hall and up the stairs in the dark. I stepped out onstage in the nick of time.
From the moment she was born, Chelsea has captivated me. I suspect a lot of parents know what I mean. My child has me hooked. That night was no different. She looked so happy recounting stories of growing up. It’s always interesting to me to hear her perspective of her childhood. You try so many things as a parent. I remember how hours after she was born, Bill walked around the hospital room with tiny Chelsea in his arms, explaining everything to her. We didn’t want to waste a moment.
Here’s what Chelsea talked about at the DNC: Our weekly trips to the library and church. Lazy afternoons outside lying on the grass and spotting shapes in the clouds. Playing a game of her invention, Which Dinosaur Is the Friendliest? She says I warned her not to be fooled, that even seemingly friendly dinosaurs were still dinosaurs. That sounds like me: wasting no opportunity to impart some practical advice, even in absurd circumstances.
She talked about her favorite books that we read to her and those she later read by herself and told us all about, like the science fantasy A Wrinkle in Time.
Mostly Chelsea talked about me always being there and how she always knew how much we loved and valued her. I cannot express the happiness it brings to hear my daughter say that. This was my number one priority every day of her childhood: making sure she knew that nothing was more important than her. I worried about this, because Bill and I were extremely busy people. We worked long hours, we traveled frequently, and the phone in our house rang constantly, often with urgent news. It wouldn’t be unexpected for a little girl growing up surrounded by all that to feel overlooked. Over the years, I’ve met politicians’ kids who say, “I was pretty lonely. I had to compete with the whole world for my parents’ attention.” That was the worry that kept me up at night when Chelsea was young. I couldn’t bear the thought.
One way we handled that was by not excluding her from our work. We talked about issues and politics with her starting from a young age. In her speech at the Democratic National Convention, she described how hard it was to see me lose the fight for health care reform in 1994, when she was fourteen. She was there to comfort me and help provide diversions, like watching Pride and Prejudice together.
For me, becoming a mother was the fulfillment of a long-held dream. I love children—love just sitting with them and being silly, love bringing smiles to their sweet faces. If you’re ever looking for me at a party, you’re likely to find me wherever the kids are. Before I even met my husband and thought about starting a family, I was a lawyer and advocate for children. When Bill and I learned that we were going to be parents, we were ecstatic. We jumped around our kitchen like we were kids ourselves.
Getting pregnant was not easy for me, but pregnancy itself was blessedly uneventful. Chelsea arrived three weeks early. I was gigantic and more than ready to meet my little one. Neither Bill nor I cared a bit whether the baby was a boy or girl. But when the doctor said, “It’s a girl!” I felt so happy, it was like a sunburst beaming out of my chest. A girl!
I hadn’t realized how much I wanted a daughter until she arrived. She was a wish so secret, I didn’t even know that I had wished it. Then she was here, and I knew: she was what I always wanted.
If we’d had a son, I’m sure I would have been just as over the moon. I would have realized at once that I had always wanted a son—a sweet little boy to raise into a strong and caring man.
But that’s not what happened. We had a daughter. And not just any daughter but someone who brought such joy and love into our lives. It felt like fate. It was the greatest thing that ever happened to me by a mile.
There’s just something about daughters. From the very beginning, I felt a rush of wisdom that I wanted to impart to her about womanhood: how to be brave, how to build real confidence and fake it when you have to, how to respect yourself without taking yourself too seriously, how to love yourself or at least try to and never stop trying, how to love others generously and courageously, how to be strong but gentle, how to decide whose opinion to value and whose to disregard quietly, how to believe in yourself even when others don’t. Some of these lessons were hard-won for me. I wanted badly to save my daughter the trouble. Maybe Chelsea could skip all that and arrive more quickly at a place of self-assurance.
My desire to be the best mother in the world didn’t translate into knowledge about how to do it. At first, I was pretty inept. In those early days, she wouldn’t stop crying. I was nearly frantic. Finally, I sat down and tried my best to make eye contact with this squirming infant. “Chelsea,” I said firmly, “this is new for both of us. I’ve never been a mother before. You’ve never been a baby. We’re just going to have to help each other do the best we can.” Those weren’t magic words that stopped her wailing, but they helped, if for no other reason than that they reminded me I was completely new at this and should be gentle with myself.
Over the years, I’ve met so many frazzled new mothers who can’t figure out how to soothe their babies or get them to nurse or sleep, and I see in their eyes that same discombobulation I felt in those early days of Chelsea’s life. It reminds me all over again how having a newborn is like every switch in your body being flicked on simultaneously. Your brain becomes a one-track mind—is the baby okay, is the baby hungry, is the baby sleeping, is the baby breathing—playing on an endless loop. If you’re a new mother reading this, sleep-deprived and semicoherent, maybe wearing a tattered sweatshirt and dreaming of your next shower, please know that so many of us have been right where you are. You’re doing great. It’ll get easier, so just hang in there. And maybe ask your partner or mom or friend to take over for a few hours so you can have that shower and get some sleep.
Chelsea was born in 1980, a time when opportunities for women were greater than ever before in human history. She wouldn’t face some of the closed doors I had. Bill and I were determined that our daughter was never going to hear “Girls can’t do that.” Not if we could help it.
What I couldn’t know back then, holding this tiny baby in my arms, is how much she would teach me about courage, confidence, and grace. Chelsea has an inner strength that amazes me. She is smart, thoughtful, observant, and even under stress or attack, conducts herself with poise and self-possession. She is gifted at friendship, always eager to meet new people but also comfortable with solitude. She trusts her mind and feeds it constantly. She stands up for what she believes. She is one of the toughest people I know, but her toughness is quiet and deliberate, easy to underestimate. That makes her even more formidable. Her smile is full of real joy.